What Joshua Bell's experiment tells us

[Yoshiharu Ito]

4 hours ago, Stephen Fine said:

Not only was the audience incapable of perceiving the difference, but the luthiers in Stradivari's workshop (presumably, like today's luthiers) were incapable of themselves putting the violins through their paces in the way that actually demonstrates their superiority.

Have you considered that it was random and that he wasn't "reaching towards" anything in particular?  I've read enough of the "golden geometry" type threads on here to have formed an opinion that the geometric patterning stuff forms a basis for design but then adjustments are made basically freehand to make things fit.  Maybe once a mold was damaged or broken or worn they just cut out new ones that were different by a few millimeters here and there.

I have a hypothesis: perhaps Stradivari was not reaching toward a fixed goal, but responding to the collapse of symmetry.

The violin is a time-dependent, nonlinear system. Symmetry collapses even when you build carefully toward it. Could we see this in the changes of his work? The forms of his late period become less regular — and this was not simply age. His sons and Bergonzi were not ninety years old. Perhaps he had come to accept the collapse itself.

There must have been a sensation — working within the Euclidean geometry of his time — of being swallowed by something that behaves like what we would today call a dynamic, non-static phenomenon. Something that resists the flat page.

This is why I think Don Noon's insistence on trial-and-error is a warning: static design thinking produces results that, when actually assembled, keep shifting. The answer refuses to stay still.

This may be fantasy. But what the hypothesis reveals is this: however beautifully you construct something on the Euclidean drawing board, what emerges is not static ,

it collapses dynamically.

[martin swan]

6 hours ago, Stephen Fine said:

the luthiers in Stradivari's workshop (presumably, like today's luthiers) were incapable of themselves putting the violins through their paces in the way that actually demonstrates their superiority.

 

I would posit that since time immemorial, a violinist thinking of buying a violin has compared it with rival instruments, generally in the company of colleagues. Why would this not have happened in Stradivari's time? It was a period of virtuosic violin repertoire, and a period when there were a lot of violins and violin-makers.

This process of collective comparison and selection (what today's musician refers to as "trying out in a hall") always tends to favour loudness - perhaps Stradivari understood this and refined his models in favour of power and projection. Perhaps he was responding to the competitive climate of the time. learning from the preferences of his clients, learning from observing other makers' work.

And perhaps in his later prosperous years with his reputation assured he thought "to hell with these damned musicians and their cloth ears, I will make the violins that I like ..."

[HoGo]

11 minutes ago, martin swan said:

I would posit that since time immemorial, a violinist thinking of buying a violin has compared it with rival instruments, generally in the company of colleagues. Why would this not have happened in Stradivari's time? It was a period of virtuosic violin repertoire, and a period when there were a lot of violins and violin-makers.

We should not forget that the plague killed most of the rivals of cremonese school and Nicolo A. and just few of his pupils including Strad were left capable of fulfilling the demand for luxury violins for noblety (considering few of his competitors could pull quality of work like he did). He actually got headstart into big business for noblety after Amatis demise and from there on mostly he defined what good NEW fiddle was, even when Amatis and Stainers were still more prized during his life.

[martin swan]

32 minutes ago, HoGo said:

We should not forget that the plague killed most of the rivals of cremonese school and Nicolo A. and just few of his pupils including Strad were left capable of fulfilling the demand for luxury violins for noblety (considering few of his competitors could pull quality of work like he did). He actually got headstart into big business for noblety after Amatis demise and from there on mostly he defined what good NEW fiddle was, even when Amatis and Stainers were still more prized during his life.

Musicians have always travelled - by the 1720s there were Albani, Tononi, Grancino, Ruggieri, Rogeri, Maggini, Amati, Stainer, Guarneri, Gofriller, Montagnana instruments to choose from etc. etc., plus probably 50 other makers whose names are forgotten.

I'm sure he was pre-eminent in his day (a long life is a great advantage) but I imagine that the degree of his pre-eminence wasn't as great as it's seen to be today. Possibly people  like us were sitting around in some locanda (the 1730 equivalent of Maestronet) opining that new violins (such as those made by Signor Stradivari) could never rival the great older instruments - that modern violins had power but were crude and colourless and sterile in conception compared to the work of the great old masters such as Andrea Amati.

[Don Noon]

4 hours ago, martin swan said:

I'm sure he was pre-eminent in his day (a long life is a great advantage) but I imagine that the degree of his pre-eminence wasn't as great as it's seen to be today. 

Pre-eminence today is boosted by his long life and high productivity (and considerable woodworking skill).  There are a lot of Strads around, a small percentage of which sound really good... but that's still a relatively large number.  And those are the ones we hear.  Nobody hears the awful-sounding ones.

[Dr. Mark]

If someone has an awful sounding Strad and would like to unload it I will trade it 1-1 for a violin of mine.  Let me know.

[quietlifemotel]

On 4/30/2026 at 4:14 AM, martin swan said:

I would posit that since time immemorial, a violinist thinking of buying a violin has compared it with rival instruments, generally in the company of colleagues. Why would this not have happened in Stradivari's time? It was a period of virtuosic violin repertoire, and a period when there were a lot of violins and violin-makers.

This process of collective comparison and selection (what today's musician refers to as "trying out in a hall") always tends to favour loudness - perhaps Stradivari understood this and refined his models in favour of power and projection. Perhaps he was responding to the competitive climate of the time. learning from the preferences of his clients, learning from observing other makers' work.

And perhaps in his later prosperous years with his reputation assured he thought "to hell with these damned musicians and their cloth ears, I will make the violins that I like ..."

Many thanks for this Martin. I'll spare you the video, but  I'm nodding my head vigorously at the screen

One of the things I've been struck by in Italy — and specifically in Cremona — is how powerfully resonant are so many of the places where Stradivari's violins might first have been tried-out-in-a-hall. Except that, instead of in a "concert hall,"  these tryouts would mostly have been churches, chapels, and rooms in palazzi. In Cremona, I've played a humble (and rather quiet) instrument in a church dating from the 1500s, whose architecture made this uninspired fiddle sound huge, completely filling the space. Same effect in many quite large public rooms in Italian palazzi — projection feels (to me, at least)  like a non-issue. This acoustic context is dramatically different than a "hall" test done in a less resonant contemporary concert hall. As an asterisk: the Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli opera house in Cremona was built in 1747...

So ... one of the things that puzzles me about the narrative of the quest for projection and its role in changing tastes  in favor of Stradivari's violins, is more specifically where and when this new aesthetic actually began to take hold? Was it during Stradivari's life? Or was it perhaps after Tarisio's death, when Vuillaume brought his motherlode of Cremonese instruments to Paris, and many of them were now heard playing in the city's largest opera houses, etc? And where there was a critical mass of star players playing for big crowds, along with similarly extraordinary luthiers and dealers eager to find ways to satisfy these players? Or ... ???

[Stephen Fine]

On 4/30/2026 at 4:14 AM, martin swan said:

I would posit that since time immemorial, a violinist thinking of buying a violin has compared it with rival instruments, generally in the company of colleagues. Why would this not have happened in Stradivari's time? It was a period of virtuosic violin repertoire, and a period when there were a lot of violins and violin-makers.

 

I guess I figured that comparison shopping was a modern luxury that was less available to violinists of the 17th and 18th centuries.